AdTech AdTalk

Adam and Gareth

Buy Side Meets Sell Side. Live Q&A with CEOs telling the truth about where Ad Tech is headed.

  1. 2 pv sitten

    Barrage of Buzzwords

    Adam and Gareth return from their post-Cannes Lions haze to break down a wild week of acquisitions, executive manifestos, and deleted LinkedIn posts. The guys kick off with a recap of the Cannes "boondoggle," where ad exchanges and platforms throw massive yacht parties and take over entire hotels to woo CMOs. Shifting to the tech stack, they discuss how AI is supercharging CRMs and customer service, including the shock for Pylon's CEO when their Claude enterprise pricing jumped from $600k to $3M. Adam and Gareth then dissect Sir Martin Sorrell's critique of holding company bureaucracy, as well as Keith Weisberg's quickly deleted post calling out agencies for pitching a "barrage of buzzwords" rather than proving their AI capabilities. They also unpack the juicy details of a controversial Meta tell-all book, Walmart's rumored $1.4 billion acquisition of Vibe, Satya Nadella's AI manifesto, and Alex Karp's buzzword-heavy Palantir-Zeta Global partnership. Key Topics: - The Cannes Lions Boondoggle: Why the festival is less about shared events and more about massive corporate flexing and yacht parties. - The Cost of AI in SaaS: How tools like Pylon and Granola are revolutionizing asynchronous communication, but facing massive enterprise API costs. - Holding Company Bureaucracy: Sir Martin Sorrell's debate on whether agencies should organize by market or capability. - Fake Agentic AI: Calling out the industry's habit of selling "a barrage of buzzwords" instead of showing real ROI and case studies. - The Vibe Acquisition: Breaking down the massive 17x multiple and $180M founder earnouts in Walmart's reported acquisition of Vibe. - The White-Collar Industrial Revolution: Satya Nadella's pushback on AI doomerism and why LLMs are uniquely targeting the bourgeoisie. Chapter Timestamps: 00:00 Intro & Cannes Lions Recap 11:27 AI in Sales, Pylon, & The Cost of Claude 19:03 Sir Martin Sorrell on HoldCo Taxonomy 28:04 Keith Weisberg Calls Out Fake Agentic AI 33:54 The Meta Tell-All Book "Careless People" 40:08 Walmart's $1.4B Acquisition of Vibe 54:18 Satya Nadella's AI Manifesto 58:48 Alex Karp, Palantir, and Zeta Global

    1 t 6 min

  2. 12.6.

    Hands on the Contract, Eyes on the Bag

    Adam and Gareth return for an absolute blockbuster episode of Adtech Ad Talk, kicking off with the biggest breaking news in the industry: Publicis and The Trade Desk have officially buried the hatchet and are back in the room together. To celebrate the end of this fierce corporate feud, the guys debut an incredible, AI-generated southern rap track summarizing the high-stakes reconciliation.The duo tackles the shifting dynamics of the AdTech landscape, breaking down why the hard binary split between the buy-side and sell-side is fundamentally dissolving as platforms move toward unified execution environments. Gareth unpacks how Meta's post-ATT pivot allowed them to perfect their "Andromeda" value function, driving an insane $50 billion optimization lift completely independent of traditional user IDs. Finally, they pull back the curtain on the "nasty" reality of dynamic take rates and hidden arbitrage in the middle, explore why the smartest marketing teams are born out of hyper-competitive industries like CPG, and feature a stunning, jarring viewer submission in Creative Corner.Key Topics:- Publicis & The Trade Desk Reunite: Breaking down the end of the feud and the power dynamics of their new handshake.- The Dissolving Buy/Sell Divide: Why legacy, siloed DSP/SSP integrations are giving way to single-environment optimization.- Meta's Post-ID Blueprint: How Apple's privacy changes forced Meta to build a superior, multi-feature recommender system.- The Dynamic Take Rate Trap: Unpacking how middleman platforms exploit averaging bounds to harvest massive margins from publishers.- Creative Corner: A powerful, unforgettable print ad highlighting period poverty and institutional shame.00:00 Intro: An Amped-Up Friday Blockbuster01:36 World Premiere: The Publicis & Trade Desk Reconciliation Rap05:23 Pre-Cannes Musings & The Certainty of Change06:18 The History of Failed DSP/SSP Mergers (Rubicon & Chango)08:08 The Death of the Legacy Buy-Side vs. Sell-Side Mindset11:32 Harvesting the Spread: The Advertiser's Right to Alpha14:18 The User ID Imbalance and Pacing Complexities16:02 How Apple's ATT Birthed Meta's $50B Recommender Engine18:41 The Looming AI Carnage for Unprepared Agencies22:55 The Rise of MCP and Direct Data Set Access25:31 Smartitude: Ranking Clients by Industry Competition26:30 The "Mafia State" of Publisher Arbitrage and Last Look28:29 Why Competition is the Only Way to Raise Publisher CPMs30:20 The Secret Rules of Transparency Pricing in CTV32:55 Beyond Taxonomies: Scoring Attributes on a Spectrum34:36 The Legacy of Cognitive (The OGs of Custom Modeling)35:46 Obstacles in the Trade Desk API (An Accidental Origin Story)37:02 Creative Corner: A Uniquely Jarring Print Ad from South Africa37:37 Outro: Bringing Back the Beat

    1 t 1 min

  3. 5.6.

    Natural Born Clickers

    Adam and Gareth break down the mind-bending "Data Gravity Theory of Adtech" introduced by industry gadfly Tom Truscari. Using a literal physics equation, they litigate whether consolidating data sets actually drives better outcomes for marketers, or if it simply forces enterprise brands into a "platform average" that dilutes their private modeling advantages. Adam shares a historical perspective on how big brands accidentally "donate" their data to ad networks, which then use it to fuel and spawn copycat competitors. The guys also dive into the return of click-driving campaigns, revisiting Comscore's famous 2008 study "Natural Born Clickers" to remind everyone that 10% of users generate the vast majority of web clicks. They expose why Google's mobile interstitial ads are their most profitable unit, look back at the 1990s Sears & Roebuck mail-order math that birthed modern addressable marketing, and laugh at a tech CEO's "new" warning about AI optimization traps that Adam actually published a decade ago. Finally, the conversation takes a wild turn into psychedelic 70s cinema, Werner Herzog, and how an ancient Persian mathematician's name evolved into the word "algorithm." Key Topics: - The Data Gravity Theory: Breaking down Truscari’s equation on data mass, friction, and M&A consolidation. - The Market Expansion Trap: How pooling enterprise data accidentally creates and scales your direct competitors. - Natural Born Clickers: Why optimizing for clicks is a dangerous heuristic that targets a tiny, non-representative slice of humanity. - The 19th-Century Roots of AdTech: Why addressable targeting is actually just rehashed Sears & Roebuck catalog math. - The Origin of the Algorithm: A quick historical detour into Al-Khwarizmi, algebra, and ancient Persian mathematics. Chapter Timestamps: 00:00 Intro: Singularity Hype & The Knicks Finals Run 03:05 Who is Tom Truscari? (Newsletter Idiosyncrasies) 04:53 Explaining the Data Gravity Equation: Mass vs. Friction 11:37 Does More Data Scale Marketer Performance or Just the Platforms? 17:49 The Data Bypass Mechanism and Private Valuations 22:20 19th-Century Ad Math: Sears & Roebuck and Capital One 25:27 Industry Debates: Bemoaning Paid Publisher Traffic 33:29 Are Clicks Coming Back? (Bottoming Out vs. New Demand) 35:49 The "Natural Born Clickers" Study & Mobile Interstitials 38:09 The Unintended Consequences of AI (A Decade-Old Rant) 43:24 XAI Valuation & Suing the Advertisers 46:31 Is LLM Search Intent Real or Just Hype? 49:34 Detour: 'The Holy Mountain' (1973) & Werner Herzog 52:23 Public School Calendars & Zoroastrian Sky Burials 54:30 From Al-Khwarizmi to Algebra: The First Algorithm

    55 min

  4. 29.5.

    Let's Get Encyclical

    Adam and Gareth dive into a philosophical and wide-ranging episode centered around the Pope's new encyclical on Artificial Intelligence. They unpack the Vatican's fears regarding humans becoming mere metrics, rising economic inequality, and the manipulation of truth. Gareth discusses the Pope's comparison of AI to the Tower of Babel—warning that a single homogenizing technology could eliminate human diversity and spirituality.The duo also explores why the AI boom is effectively the "Industrial Revolution for white-collar workers," threatening knowledge workers while leaving manual labor untouched. They debate the growing epidemic of "AI slop" on LinkedIn, the bizarre rise of AI-generated "talking toe fungus" affiliate ads, and a startling BYU study claiming a massive percentage of committed adults are having affairs with AI chatbots. Finally, Adam compares programmatic ad networks to brokerages and custom AI valuation models to hedge funds, explaining why enterprise brands need bespoke decisioning architectures (like Coke vs. Pepsi) rather than aggregated averages.Key Topics:The Pope's AI Encyclical: Analyzing the Vatican's warning against AI monopolies and the "Tower of Babel" effect.The White-Collar Industrial Revolution: Why LLMs pose a unique threat to writers, lawyers, and consultants.AI Chatbot Affairs: Reacting to a BYU study on the rise of AI chatbot romances among committed adults.Brokerages vs. Hedge Funds: Why massive enterprise advertisers need custom valuation models instead of aggregated ad network averages.90s Foreshadowing & AI Ads: From the 1994 Singapore caning to AI-generated toe fungus commercials.00:00 Intro, Tampa Weddings & Cannes Prep04:15 The 1994 Singapore Caning & 90s Foreshadowing09:53 AI-Generated Toe Fungus Ads10:53 The Pope's Encyclical on AI14:55 AI Liability & The Anarchist Cookbook17:01 The Industrial Revolution for White-Collar Workers24:51 Outsourced Cognition & LinkedIn "AI Slop"28:28 The Pope's True Fears: Metrics & Inequality31:05 The Tower of Babel Narrative38:29 The BYU Study on AI Chatbot Affairs45:46 Coke vs. Pepsi: The Flaw in Averaged AI Models55:16 Brokerages vs. Hedge Funds in Ad Tech59:03 SpaceX's S1 & Twitter Ad Revenue01:03:46 OpenAds Pivots to a DSP

    1 t 5 min

  5. 22.5.

    Because of the Implication

    Adam (broadcasting from a hotel in Tampa) and Gareth tackle a massive week in AdTech, leading with Publicis's shocking acquisition of LiveRamp. They unpack why LiveRamp's true value isn't just its identity graph, but its ubiquitous "plumbing" that connects enterprise CRM data to the entire ecosystem, and the strategic "implication" this has for non-Publicis clients. Next, they compare the impending Agentic AI revolution to the 1960s shipping container boom and the creation of OpenRTB, exploring how standardization creates massive efficiency gains for the adopters (like Walmart did with RFID). Finally, they discuss why enterprise brands are tired of renting decisioning from ad networks, the difference between custom valuation (alpha) and averaged ad network decisioning, and debut a brand new segment: ATAT on the Street in Brooklyn!Key Topics:- The Shipping Container Revolution: How standardization and Agentic AI will mirror the efficiency gains of the 1960s logistics boom.- OpenRTB History: Why the original JSON bid request bundle was AdTech's first "shipping container".- Publicis Buys LiveRamp: Breaking down the M&A deal, Terry Kawaja's take, and why LiveRamp's plumbing is its ultimate moat.- The End of Renting Decisioning: Why enterprise advertisers are moving away from ad networks to build custom valuation models.- ATAT on the Street: Real-world reactions to AI, deepfakes, and data center water usage from the people of Brooklyn.Chapter Timestamps:00:00 Intro: Adam's Hotel Wi-Fi02:28 The Shipping Container Revolution & Agentic AI08:48 OpenRTB: AdTech's First Shipping Container12:42 Breaking News: Publicis Acquires LiveRamp14:54 Terry Kawaja's Take on Agentic AI18:06 Why Publicis Made the Deal (Growth & Capital)19:32 The Magic of LiveRamp's Plumbing24:34 Identity Graphs & Defensibility34:06 Holding Companies, Epsilon, and Xaxis43:24 Mark Grether, Uber, and PayPal Ad Networks47:11 Why Brands Are Done "Renting Decisioning"52:00 Custom Valuation vs. Averaged AI59:24 ATAT on the Street: Brooklyn Reacts to AI

    1 t 11 min

  6. 17.5.

    I'll Take Any Test You're Willing To Take

    Adam and Gareth reunite to unpack an explosive Q2 in ad tech, kicking things off with the "triple hockey stick" growth driving Meta’s 33% revenue surge. The guys discuss how Meta’s ruthless AI shift and integration of massive server compute is crushing Google in the enterprise ad market, and why Google's strategy of over-servicing holding companies is backfiring.They also dive into the backlash against Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green and his "open internet" messaging, debating why retail media networks (RMNs) are growing so fast despite the inherent conflict of interest between retailers and CPG brands. Plus, Gareth explores the terrifying new "split brain" architecture between DSPs and SSPs, Adam makes the case for why "barter" and "trade" agencies still exist to liquidate bad media buys, and they examine how Swivel's new agentic tools are finally bringing automated, human-like operations to Connected TV (CTV) yield management.Key Topics:Meta's AI Dominance: Why Meta’s massive AI efficiency is crushing Google in the enterprise ad market, despite Google's bloated service teams.The Trade Desk Backlash: Unpacking the industry's frustration with Jeff Green's "open internet" pitch and why the growth numbers don't match the story.Retail Media Networks (RMNs): Why companies like Kroger and Albertsons won't share their data, and how it hurts CPG advertisers.The End of "Getting Lost": A philosophical take on how AI tools are stripping younger generations of resilience and problem-solving skills.Agentic Ad Ops (Swivel): How new AI agents are outperforming human traders in the CTV market by running 100 manual interactions per hour.00:00 Intro: Hangovers & Detroit Style Pizza04:55 Defending Jeff Green’s "Open Internet" Pitch11:15 Q1 Earnings: Meta Crushes the Competition13:12 The Conflict Within Retail Media Networks (RMNs)20:49 Why Amazon Built Ad Tech from Scratch22:50 The Risk of a Google Display Network Collapse25:27 Swivel's Agentic CTV Case Study34:04 The Problem with Barter and Trade Agencies41:19 The "Split Brain" Architecture of DSPs vs. SSPs48:39 Postmortem: The IAB Tech Lab's New DTE Standard57:30 Cash Patel and The Ad Tech Investigations01:00:23 Closing Thoughts: Why We Need ACRONYM

    1 t 2 min

  7. 8.5.

    The Grand Bargain (ft. Matt Sattel, OpenX)

    Adam and Gareth return to the virtual studio to debate the definition of Supply Path Optimization (SPO) and why the sell-side and buy-side can never seem to agree on what it actually means. They are joined by OpenX CEO Matt Sattel to discuss his transition from the agency world to the SSP side, and why OpenX made the expensive, grueling leap to cloud infrastructure back in 2019 to prepare for the AI era.The trio unpacks the industry's so-called "Grand Bargain," debating whether a multilateral committee can truly fix the adversarial relationship between DSPs and SSPs. Gareth argues that ID Bridging is secretly a brilliant conversion-optimization engine in disguise, while Adam pitches his "Premium Coffee" theory to explain how publishers can finally escape the MFA (Made For Advertising) race to the bottom. Plus, a look at why 50% of programmatic ad requests are filtered out, and what OpenX really means by their new "Intelligent SSP" rebrand.00:00 Intro: The "Bright Lights" of Live Shows03:03 The Arc of the Sophisticated CMO06:56 Introducing Matt Sattel (CEO, OpenX)10:04 The Two Definitions of SPO13:16 The Premium Coffee Theory (Escaping MFA)14:52 Filtering Out 50 Billion Requests a Day16:41 The "Grand Bargain" Between Buyers and Sellers19:39 Gareth's Take: ID Bridging is Actually Optimization24:14 The True Cost of Eliminating MFA27:28 Google's Role in the MFA Epidemic32:41 The "Lego Baseplate" Strategy38:42 Why OpenX Moved to the Cloud in 201944:07 Direct Sales & Agentic Buying (ADCP)51:30 Differentiated Demand for Publishers57:40 The Intelligent SSP Rebrand

    1 t 2 min

  8. 1.5.

    Claude the Gaude (ft. Adam Markey)

    It's an all-Adam episode this week! With Gareth out, Adam Heimlich is joined by stealth startup founder and product leader Adam Markey to discuss the reality of building an ad tech company from scratch in the AI era.The guys dive deep into the philosophy of AI adoption, contrasting Anthropic's enterprise-focused "Constitutional AI" against OpenAI's consumer-driven, entertainment-style models. Markey shares how using Claude as a "full-stack" co-founder has drastically reduced product development cycles from six months to just three days. Plus, they explore why treating AI as a "replacement human" is the wrong starting point, how to avoid AI-generated "slop" in both creative and media planning, and why Anthropic's $20 billion valuation might actually be justified if they can maintain their compounding context moat.Finally, they touch on the IAB’s Agentic Realtime Framework (ARTF), the return of "frenemy" collaboration in ad tech, and why Meta's insane 33% revenue growth is tied directly to their massive investments in server compute.00:00 Intro: Welcome to Planet Ad Tech03:45 Bootstrapping a Startup in the AI Era06:40 Using AI for Complex Rule Prioritization08:13 Anthropic vs. OpenAI: Enterprise vs. Consumer12:03 Claude’s "Compounding Context" Moat14:28 Building a RevOps Dashboard in 2 Hours16:45 Change Management and Full-Stack Founders19:59 AI as a Force Multiplier, Not a Replacement25:35 The Value of Markdown Files for Context28:06 AI as the Ultimate Information Condenser32:28 Anthropic’s Path to Profitability37:25 Working with Google’s "Stitch" Design Agent39:07 The Edge of AI: Humor, Differentiation, and "Slop"44:09 Agentic Standards (ADCP & ARTF)51:03 Advice for Product Managers at Legacy DSPs53:50 The Enterprise Rush to Adopt AI59:49 Meta's 33% Growth and the Server Compute Race

    1 t 4 min
Näytä kaikki (56)

Tietoja

Buy Side Meets Sell Side. Live Q&A with CEOs telling the truth about where Ad Tech is headed.

Tiedot

  • Tekijä
    Adam and Gareth
  • Julkaisuvuodet
    2025 - 2026
  • Jaksot
    56
  • Luokitus
    Lapsille sopimaton
  • Copyright
    © Adam and Gareth
  • Ohjelman sivusto
    AdTech AdTalk

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